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CNN Host Debunks Mike Johnson’s False Hundreds of ‘Known Terrorists’ Claim in Real Time
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was forced to walk back a claim he made after CNN’s Jake Tapper debunked it live on-air in real time after the Christian nationalist Republican of Louisiana tossed out several unsubstantiated “facts” about the southern border.
Despite having recessed the House until next week, Johnson, along with dozens of Republicans, traveled to Texas Wednesday to see the southern border and ramp up their anti-Biden attacks while furthering their announced agenda to impeach the Secretary of Homeland Security. No cabinet secretary has been impeached in nearly 150 years.
“Well Jake, seven million people have come into the country since Biden walked into the Oval Office, and that’s a low estimate,” Johnson claimed. He offered no proof to support that number, nor did he say they entered the country unlawfully.
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“Most people believe it may be twice that high,” he continued. The majority of Americans do not have first-hand knowledge of the number of unlawful border crossings.
The right-wing New York Post in December claimed “3.8 million people have entered the United States through its borders since President Joe Biden took office in 2021 — nearly half of whom slipped into the country illegally and were never caught.” That would put the number of unlawful entries at about 1.9 million, far less than the seven million Johnson tried to suggest.
“We have nearly two million got-aways that we know about, not to mention those who evade capture,” Johnson continued.
“Over 300 known terrorists apprehended at the border trying to come in,” Johnson falsely claimed. “We don’t know how many evaded capture and detection there in the country, potentially setting up terrorist cells everywhere.”
When he was done spreading his claims about fentanyl (which is mostly trafficked by U.S. citizens through U.S. ports of entry, and not by undocumented immigrants,) and anecdotes about human trafficking, Tapper corrected the Speaker.
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“So just one note on the terrorist thing,” the CNN host told viewers. “There aren’t ‘hundreds of known terrorists’ getting into the country. There are people whose identity have been flagged on a certain database. I just don’t want people out there thinking that, you know, 200 members of Hamas have flown into the country and we don’t even know about it. It’s a little bit more complicated.”
Johnson, appearing surprised and disturbed he was corrected live on-air, interjected.
“Hey, hey Jake,” Johnson interrupted.
“I’m not saying that it’s not serious. I’m just saying these aren’t necessarily terrorists,” Tapper replied.
“That’s the Terrorist Watch List, Jake. It takes quite a bit to make that list, okay? These are dangerous people who are coming into the country.”
In fact, the Terrorist Watch List, officially the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB), contains over two million names as of December. Someone’s appearance on the Terrorist Screening Database does not make them a “known terrorist.”
Appearing on the TSDB “doesn’t mean they’re a terrorist,” according to Russ Travers, who CBS News identified as “a veteran of the U.S. intelligence community for four decades who helped create the watchlist.”
“It means there’s something that has led a department or agency to say, ‘This person needs a closer look.'”
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National security attorney Bradley Moss weighed in on Johnson’s remarks:
“Trump’s [White House] tried this a lot. Trump would say they were catching terrorists every day or DHS would say they caught over 3,000/year, suggesting it was all tied to the border. Under oath, they would concede the ‘known or suspected terrorists’ caught were at places like the airport.”
He added, “Johnson trying to suggest actual, verified terrorists are just walking across the border. The TSDB he is referencing is loaded up with tons of people with tenuous connections at most. Every time it gets audited by OIG they find tons of errors.”
And Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director for the American Immigration Council also debunked Johnson’s remarks.
“Johnson also says the number of migrants who’ve come under Biden might be as high as 14 million,” he said. “That is just completely made up, even if you include the 2 million so-called “got-aways” he then mentions (many who were the repeat crossers mentioned above).”
And he added: “Johnson also makes the classic error of confusing human smuggling with human trafficking when he cites an estimate of cartel profits. Most people paying the cartels WANT to come to the US. That’s human smuggling. Trafficking is when it’s involuntary.”
Former Mexican Ambassador to the U.S., Arturo Sarukhan, offered this assessment of Johnson remarks: “This is pure and unrefined gobbledygook…”
Watch Johnson and Tapper below or at this link.
SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: Over 300 known terrorists apprehended at the border
JAKE TAPPER: There aren’t hundreds of known terrorists getting into the country pic.twitter.com/OupsyawGAX
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 3, 2024
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
